I have long been an admirer of Randy Kehler’s courageous life choices. If you don’t know anything of Randy’s committed life, simply look him up.

However, I am troubled by his perplexing stand against that wondrous landscape innovation — the gas leaf blower [“Gas leaf blowers an all-around menace,” Recorder, Dec. 8]. I wish he’d make peace with them. Decades back I too spent some years in the bucolic setting of Colrain, enjoying the birdsong above the gurgling North River. But always I had a feeling something was missing.

When I moved to the more suburban environs of Greenfield, I found out what it was. The morning wail of the leaf blower! My god how those engines knit whole neighborhoods together in surround-sound choruses. They blew the birds and birdsong out of the water.

In town what matters most is not the land, but the look. Trees have been welcome in New England for far too many millennia now. They’re Trojan horses for the greatest enemy of town and suburb: leaves.

Randy, we’re at war out here on the lawn. Join up. Try thinking of leaf-blowing landscapers as an army of avenging angels — like those monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. They’re here to save us from any hint of biodiversity. That scorched-earth clatter is the sound of suburban salvation, shock and awe for the common good.

Someday, jet-packed, landscapers will descend from the heavens to pluck buds from the trees before any leaves can sprout. Then, we’ll have peace.

Karl Meyer

Greenfield